


Sex With Your Drugged Team Leader: Is It Really Such A Bad Idea?

by imperfectcircle



Series: Stories by theme: Romance [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Aliens Make Them Do It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-25
Updated: 2006-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle/pseuds/imperfectcircle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which aliens drug them. Repeatedly. (Set mid Season 1.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sex With Your Drugged Team Leader: Is It Really Such A Bad Idea?

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** [Spoilery: See [here](http://imperfectcircle.livejournal.com/29823.html#cutid1)]  
> **Notes:** Beta thanks to [](http://villainny.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://villainny.livejournal.com/)**villainny**. All mistakes, of course, mine.

"For the last time: I am marginally further up the moral scale than a _rapist_. Do I have to draw you a chart?" And god help him, Rodney found himself rooting around in his pack for Zelenka's last printout of the power adaptor readings to scribble on. If he was going to have to put it in histogram form to get the point through Sheppard's thick skull, he would.

The printed data wasn't that important, anyway; Zelenka's laughable scheme to increase efficiency by modifying the -- unless, of course, they ran the output through the crystal lattice _first_. In the background, he was vaguely aware of a kneeling Sheppard trying to get his attention from about waist height, no doubt for round fifty-eight of Sex With Your Drugged Team Leader: Is It Really Such A Bad Idea?

"Not now, Major," he said, flapping a hand distractedly. "If I can just get these numbers down, I might be able increase the cross-platform power transfer on Atlantis by seven or eight percent." Seven point oh three five percent, if Zelenka's data was right, but there was no harm in a little optimism.

Rodney didn't shy away from awkward questions. _Are we all going to die?_ he could deal with, and had done with an alarmingly high frequency since coming to Atlantis. _Whose fault is it?_ also proved useful on occasion, at least when the answer wasn't him. But _Why the Hell is Major Sheppard humping my leg in the middle of our tent?_ was not something he'd ever wanted to find himself asking, and certainly not on a routine mission to investigate the trading potential of what was beginning to look like P3X-Date Rape.

And the natives had seemed so friendly, too. Blah blah we welcome travellers from beyond the stars, blah blah we are all bonded in our abject misery and fear of the Wraith, blah blah simple trust ritual, nothing to be alarmed by.

Rodney would never admit it, but he liked the trust rituals. Sure, he had better uses for his time, but compared to the mindless terror of the lack-of-trust rituals, there were fates worse than half an hour while Ford balanced a watermelon on his head, or Sheppard tunelessly aimed for notes Rodney would have been just as happy not knowing existed, or Teyla danced and shimmied body parts that yeah, okay, he shouldn't be thinking about right now. Not helping to convince Sheppard he wasn't interested.

He noted down the last of the important figures for what was going to be Zelenka's new project, then looked down at Sheppard's dilated pupils. "And stop kneeling in front of me like that. It's off-putting." Technically a lie, but, again, _date rape_. Not Rodney's style. Even if Sheppard was making those adorable whining noises whenever his hands were batted away from Rodney's zipper.

Eyes suddenly dark, Sheppard rose and stepped back into a slouch so obviously calculated Rodney was almost offended. Did Sheppard really think he'd fall for that old routine?

Ford and Teyla, still at the feast, suddenly seemed very far away.

"I want you," Sheppard said grimly, projecting an air of Don't Fuck With Me at odds with his request.

He moved forward, back into Rodney's personal space like he'd never been gone. Despite himself, Rodney had to admire this change in strategy. Whiny, he could deal with, and perhaps -- after a decent interval of Elizabeth-mandated sensitivity -- mock mercilessly. But this heat was coming close to knocking him off balance.

Sheppard's hands were on Rodney's arms, pinning them to his sides. He leaned in, breath hot against Rodney's lips; if Rodney moved forward a fraction, even opened his mouth to protest this treatment, they'd be kissing. It wouldn't be his fault. Sheppard, even drugged, could easily overpower him. If they happened to struggle just a little in the wrong direction, their mouths would press together as _the alien drugs made his quite-possibly-straight, most-definitely-not-consenting team mate molest him_.

Right. Bad idea.

He pulled back to get space to protest. "You're drugged, Major. I'm not." Sheppard's grip loosened.

"You could take the drug too?" Sheppard suggested, raising his eyebrows hopefully, all trace of Major Scary-Ass suddenly abandoned in favour of playfulness. He pushed his hips forward until they touched Rodney's, and the quirk of his eyebrows showed he'd noticed Rodney's unfortunate lack of indifference. Which totally wasn't his fault; he wasn't _dead_, much as they were both going to wish he was tomorrow.

"With that sort of thinking, you'll go far in today's military." Rodney shuddered, shaking off Sheppard's hands, which had stayed resting gently against his arms. The loss of warmth left a dull ache he easily brushed aside. "God knows what sort of damage it could do to my brain, let alone--" The thought struck him. "What about you? Even now, the drugs could be doing untold harm to your already questionable IQ." He held up a finger in front of Sheppard's eyes. "Follow my finger."

Sheppard grinned a sloppy, irreverent smile that almost reached his eyes. His eyes which, Rodney noticed with alarm, weren't tracking his finger. "I'm fine, Rodney. Nothing a little sex won't cure." Sheppard moved closer again.

The natives had said they already trusted Teyla, which Rodney now took to mean they were scared of her terrible, terrible vengeance if they'd tried to do something like this to her. Rodney refused, point blank, to drink anything that could kill him in a flash of horrible, citrusy death. Carson would back him up on this, he was almost sure. Which left Ford and Sheppard, and Ford had eaten the sacred berries on what he insisted on calling The Planet Of The Purple Spiders, despite the fact no one else had seen them, so that had made it Sheppard's turn. And then there had been the blah blah celebratory banquet and the blah blah traditional songs of blah, which was all very well until Sheppard had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and now:

"You want me too," observed Sheppard, the wily bastard. Almost as if _n_ years of military training had bought him rudimentary observational skills. His voice was firm. "We could be good together. I could make you--"

"So help me, if the next three words out of your mouth are 'feel so good' then alien rohypnol or no alien rohypnol, I will make your life _hell_ when we get back to Atlantis. Pure hell."

At that, Sheppard looked at him with the first glimmering of intelligence he'd displayed since waking up. He tilted his head to one side, looking at Rodney with honest curiosity. "What makes you think we're going back?"

The faint suggestion of panic Rodney had been feeling since Sheppard had yawned, opened his eyes and looked at Rodney with _want_ finally took centre stage. "What do you know that -- and you know how I hate to ask this -- I don't?"

Sheppard shrugged.

Rodney shouted.

And then there was gunfire and running and frantic wormhole activation with an unconscious Sheppard slung over Teyla's shoulders. All very exciting if you were demented enough to like that sort of thing.

Rodney wasn't.

===

"So," said Sheppard as they walked down the corridor. He looked hungover as all hell, but -- thankfully -- sober.

"Forget about it," suggested Rodney.

"Cool."

Their shoulders bumped as they entered Elizabeth's office.

Later, in the canteen, Sheppard's lack of unease was beginning to seriously piss Rodney off. The whole What's A Grope Between Friends? act was all very well, but he didn't even flinch when Rodney leaned into his space to steal his fries.

"Shouldn't you be, I don't know, more freaked out by all this?" asked Rodney. He turned to Zelenka, who was for some reason trying to ignore their discussion. "He should be more freaked out by this."

Zelenka nodded. "I am."

Sheppard moved a shoulder in the laziest shrug Rodney had ever seen, and that included the offerings from the pitiful excuses for students he'd TA'd at North Western. That stint had lasted the first six months of his PhD, until the extra funding had come through and the faculty refused to let him near young, impressionable minds again, in almost that order.

"I was drugged; you weren't." Sheppard poked at the not-chicken with his fork. "It's no big deal."

"Heightmeyer must have a ball with you," said Rodney, radiating calm dignity. "I can see it now. 'Tell me about your father.' 'He was a dick; I was laconic. It's no big.'"

Sheppard rolled his eyes, but his eyebrows were laughing. "No need to get mean, McKay."

"Get?" Zelenka murmured, keeping his eyes firmly on his food.

"You molested me while drugged!" At some point in the conversation, people on other tables had started giving them strange looks. Personally, Rodney blamed Sheppard. "What?" He said loudly. "You're all just jealous."

Sheppard picked up their trays -- and "Hey! Major, I was still eating!" -- stood to leave. "Fun as this has been," he said. "You know how it is. Places to go, mission reports to fabricate."

"I think he's repressing it," Rodney said to Zelenka, watching Sheppard walk away.

"I think I don't care." Zelenka glared at him. "I also think those are my fries."

Rodney's hand paused midway to Zelenka's plate. "He took mine!"

Zelenka pushed his glasses up. "And of course, you must follow his lead."

===

Sheppard blinked.

"Oh, please," said Rodney. "You want me." It was obvious. He couldn't understand how he hadn't seen it before.

Sheppard muttered something inane and inconsequential about being drugged.

"No, no, not that," said Rodney, waving it off with a casual haha! and ooh, his hand was pretty when it moved through the air like that. Why had he never noticed it before? There were lots of things he'd never noticed before meeting the nice, friendly natives of M4X-320. Like his gun. How had he never noticed the way it fit together? All the shiny black pieces of metal, slotting together and moving against each other with grace and precision. Of course, it would be child's play to adjust its range, if he could only take it apart to see how all the pretty cogs melded together.

For no discernable reason, someone was taking his gun away from him. "Easy there," Sheppard said, which reminded Rodney how the whole world fit together now, and yes, as Sheppard's hands brushed against his, he knew he was right.

"Yes, yes, it's all so easy now," he explained carefully. They were sitting on a tree stump outside the main village hall, waiting for everyone else to finish doing-- something. Rodney didn't care. He was out here with Sheppard, because Sheppard had patted him on the arm and said, "That's enough, McKay, let's get you cooled off," when he so obviously meant "I want to bend you over the nearest level surface and rut like bunnies," and the sky was blue and there were birds and, well, he thought they were birds, they could just be very small crocodiles with wings and beaks and where was he?

Oh, yeah. "You clearly want me, and now I want you, so we should fuck."

Sheppard spluttered something equally inane and inconsequential. It was lucky Rodney wanted him for his body, too; all this blather about the planet of the date rape drugs and movie sequels wasn't at all attractive.

He knew when it had happened, the tip from awareness of Sheppard to _awareness_ of Sheppard, this thrum through his body. It was the mission with the inappropriate touching, but then it was also kinda like the trees, the way they swayed from side to side because they were all one, all one network of trees, one tree and many together, and hey, they could so use that to improve the yield of the weapons systems, if they just found the right way to wire the sensors together. He started to draw diagrams in the air, but they faded before he could complete the circuit.

Sheppard was looking at him strangely. "_Now_ you want me?" he asked, and really, they were lucky one of them was a genius, because Sheppard's contributions to this discussion made no sense. Pretty, Rodney thought, but not that bright.

"One: The way you look at me. You have more facial expressions for talking to me than you do for the whole of the rest of Atlantis combined, you and your misguided belief that only freaky robot soldiers are fit for command."

Sheppard smiled. It looked weird, somehow. Not wrong, just different than normal. "You could build me a robot army to match." If Rodney didn't know it was against the immutable laws of something, he'd think the smile reached Sheppard's eyes.

"Yes, yes. I could do that." Rodney put his hand on Sheppard's thigh. The rush of heat reminded him of their last reconnaissance mission. Not when Sheppard had been molesting him -- he brought his head up proudly in memory of how well he'd stood against such grave temptation -- but before all that, at the meal. The warmth of Sheppard's sleeping body against his own, the feel of Sheppard breathing gently against his cheek. Trying to show Sheppard what he meant, what was so inevitable about it all, he pressed his face to Sheppard's cheek, putting his other hand at the back of Sheppard's neck in case he tried to pull away.

Rodney stayed there for a moment, breathing against Sheppard's skin, until he realised that it was moving beneath him. Not away, though. That was good.

"And two?" Sheppard was saying, lightly. At some point he'd taken Rodney's hand off his thigh.

Rodney knew the answer to this one. "Two!" he said, lips moving against Sheppard's cheek. "You always know where I am." He felt Sheppard try to speak. "I've had more papers published than you've had suicide runs, so don't insult my towering intellect by denying it, Major. It's like you have a counter in your head, clocking up the exact distance between us at any given moment."

Against his mouth, Sheppard's jaw clenched. Rodney moved his hand up to stroke it, forgetting his own face was in the way.

"Ow!" he said, sitting back. Sheppard's laugh warmed him even as his lips cooled against the air. "Sex?" Rodney suggested. "I'm willing to overlook the insult to my dignity for, hmm, a blowjob?" And it looked like he _was_ drugged, after all, because he could see the colour of Sheppard's laughter, blue and green against his chest.

Sheppard shook his head, not unkindly. "Rodney, you're high."

"On you?" Rodney tried, earning himself a shove off the tree stump. "Hey! No mistreating the innocent victim of evil alien doping schemes!" But then it felt really comfortable, lying here looking up at Sheppard's outline against the sky. Could Sheppard see his happiness, too? he wondered. He went to sleep.

===

"So," said Rodney, back aching with every step he took. "I don't actually remember yesterday, as such." Just flashes: sense impressions against his lips and hands, an echo of laughter. Being turned down. "But I gather I was my usual charming and refined self."

"Yeah," said Sheppard, screwing up his face in what Rodney chose to take as sympathy.

"Thanks."

Sheppard stood back to let Rodney enter Elizabeth's office first.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Elizabeth said. Ford and Teyla were already sitting down, radiating innocence, as was, huh, Carson. "I've asked Dr Beckett here today to give you a presentation on some of the crucial differences between alien psychotropics and, what was it, Carson?"

"Sweeties," said Carson, dryly.

"Yes, yes, everyone's a comedian," said Rodney, shifting in his chair. "If you'd put half as much thought into fixing my back -- and thank you, by the way, Major, for not moving me into a less tortuous position when I apparently passed out totally helpless yesterday. Much appreciated."

Sheppard didn't even nod to acknowledge Rodney's pain.

"Did I mention _ow_, Major?"

"You may have done, yes," Teyla interrupted with a soft smile that was obviously intended to comfort him. At least _someone_ appreciated his pain.

"Drugs," Carson began, "can be hard to spot. Sometimes the natives don't, say, try to tell you beforehand, Rodney, about the potential side effects of their--"

Rodney tuned the cruel mockery out in favour of trying to catch Sheppard's eye. Sadly, this plan was doomed to failure; Sheppard was too busy looking off into the distance with a grim expression. Considering that this one was _his_ traumatising alien rohypnol incident, Rodney found such behaviour a little self-indulgent. But there were real problems at stake here, namely this colossal waste of Rodney's time, so whatever Sheppard was pissy about today would just have to wait.

"Don't you have trials to run or prayers to chant backwards?" Rodney asked Carson, but his heart wasn't in it. What was the point of being given a whole-team intervention if no one on said team would waggle their eyebrows at you?

===

Next time, it was Ford's turn to be drugged. He took it well, singing the entire first act of _The Mikado_ before collapsing where he stood.

"Hey," said Rodney, poking Ford's body lightly with his foot. "At least he didn't try to--" He caught Sheppard's expression. "Um." Sheppard's stupid pouting fit hadn't subsided, even after Rodney had explained in the smallest words he knew that this was _Rodney's_ pain, thank you, and if Sheppard regretted missing his chance at sympathy, he could just wait until the next inevitable mind-altering off-world experience.

Teyla observed them both for a moment before looking pointedly at where Ford lay in a heap. Sheppard's eyebrows did their best impression of guilty, and then he and Teyla picked Ford up to move him inside the tent.

It was a nice night, starry and clear; the sort Rodney had come to another galaxy to see it. The natives -- Polythrosians -- had tactfully withdrawn after Ford's musical reaction to their tea, leaving them with nothing to do but stand in the tiny clearing by their tent and listen to Ford's delightful drug-induced snores. He was lucky it took alien dope to make him wheeze like a wounded rhino, else Rodney would have smothered him in his sleep weeks ago.

From the look on Teyla's face, he'd have had to wait his turn. She was standing to his left, stretching her muscles in some Xena routine that really, couldn't be healthy. Sheppard was on the other side of the clearing, watching her blankly.

Rodney exhaled, then realised he had his hand pressed to his lips again. He snatched it away.

"We have not had luck with drugs recently," she observed. Her meaningful silence was drowned out by Ford's heavy breathing.

"Your turn next," Sheppard said to Teyla with a more fake than normal smile, now not looking at either of them. He was pacing around the perimeter of the clearing, such as it was, peering through the trees for the armed horde of Polythrosians they were no doubt due.

"I do not think so," she said. "We Athosians are," she paused, taking her time finding the tactful word, "more used to such things. I have sampled many intoxicants on many worlds, but none have ever made me behave so strangely, nor filled me with the desire for something I did not already want."

Rodney looked at his feet. "Yes, well."

Sheppard said nothing.

"Who is the Lord High Executioner of whom Lt Ford sings? Do your people have many executions?"

"Major," Rodney said quickly, "I think you can field this one." He looked up. "I'm Canadian," he said to Teyla, by way of explanation.

"Some States do have the death penalty," Sheppard began, giving his best Am I A Dumb Guy Acting Smart, Or A Smart Guy Acting Oh So Very, Very Dumb? You Decide smile, "but the song is kinda about Japan, only not."

In the snore-filled silence, Rodney began prioritising some of the projects the chemists wanted to do. Just because you were too busy to chastise them for one minor explosion, they thought they had free rein over their own experiments. As if Rodney hadn't caused bigger explosions when he was in seventh grade. Jeannie had, he remembered now, made a sickening amount of money charging her classmates to see the crater. He tapped his fingers against his lips.

Teyla spoke again. "My people tell of --" A snore from inside the tent punctuated her words. "-- a time of great --" And another. Her face turned grim. "If you will excuse me." She disappeared into the tent.

Sheppard had stopped pacing, and was watching Rodney's hand with a blank expression. Rodney shot him a look. He trusted Teyla with his life, but there were limits.

Widening his eyes slightly in acknowledgement, Sheppard met Rodney's gaze for perhaps the first time since the last lot of drugs had worn off. The snores had stopped. "We've got her six," he said.

"Got it." Rodney nodded. "'Oh, Elizabeth, the natives overpowered us and snatched poor Ford away before we could-- What? No, no, Teyla got those bloodstains washing her hair.'"

"If I could not kill him without bloodshed," said Teyla, emerging from the tent with a pleased smile on her face, "I would not be worthy of my people."

"You _didn't_ kill him, right?" Sheppard asked, straight-faced.

Teyla inclined her head to him, but said nothing.

Not looking at each other, Rodney and Sheppard shuffled a little closer together.

===

"Three Little Maids?" said Sheppard as they walked, keeping a careful three feet between them.

"Who knew Ford had it in him?" Rodney agreed.

They entered Elizabeth's office humming Gilbert and Sullivan.

Ford glared.

The next day in the lab, Zelenka was giving him odd looks. "You're strangely cheerful. Please stop it."

Rodney couldn't help it. He contorted his mouth into a delighted grin.

"Yes, thank you, that." Zelenka was rewiring one of the laptops to interface more easily with the Ancient database. "That is what I would like you to stop." The laptop made a sound like a very small light bulb going out, and he began to swear.

Still grinning, Rodney started to poke at the latest set of reports. "I see Simpson wants to shut down power to an entire sector so she can run some half-cocked diagnostic on the transporters," he said by way of conversation. If he couldn't get on with anything interesting this morning, he'd be damned if he wouldn't take someone else with him.

"As you suggested last week," Zelenka pointed out, the smug Czech bastard. He jammed a screwdriver into the laptop, muttering a curse Rodney didn't recognise. "I am more curious as to who has left a cup of coffee outside the door."

"Huh." That was good. Rodney had thought he'd been hallucinating the smell. "That'll be what passes for Major Sheppard's latest attempt to apologise for his general weirdness." He got up to fetch it. "My cat used to do it all the time, though admittedly this fresh coffee idea is infinitely preferable to dead mice. They left stains, you know. Euch." He shuddered.

"Ah," said Zelenka.

The coffee was damned good.

===

They didn't talk about P4X-984. Ever.

===

Not even to Elizabeth.

===

On Carson's orders, they refused the food on Milon. Teyla smoothed it over with a diplomatic half-truth about religious fasting so convincing Rodney vowed never to trust her stories about Athosian customs again. He always _knew_ the one about paying her regular tributes was a crock.

"Their ways," she agreed with the Milons, "are very strange. But I must respect their Beckettian dictates while I am among them. Dr McKay," she inclined her head at Rodney, who was amusing himself betting on when Ford would crack, "has only recently been convinced to trade with those who do not practice Voodoo."

At his snort of indignation, Ford let a burst of laughter escape. Sheppard growled at them -- well, at Ford -- but it was obvious from his blank expression he was laughing on the inside.

Then blah blah strange Milon customs that made fasting and worshipping Carson look normal. There was the thing with the sticks and the not-jello, and then Ford had to balance another watermelon-like fruit on his head -- "Getting pretty good at that," Sheppard said encouragingly -- and _then_ Teyla explained that much as they'd love to sit in a room full of mind-altering smoke and become one with their toe fungus, it was against Carson's orders. That pretty much cemented their reputation in the Milons' minds as more Amish than the fake Genii, but fortunately didn't dent anyone's enthusiasm to trade food for aspirin.

The walk back to the Gate was uneventful.

"Does this seem strange to you?" Sheppard spoke out of the corner of his mouth, directing his remark at anyone but Rodney. He'd been pissy ever since Rodney had thanked him for the coffee, which was weird even by Sheppard's oh so very high standards.

Ford looked around suspiciously for blow-dart wielding natives. Rodney made a mental note to shoot any hippies on sight.

"The Milons are a peaceful folk. I am sure they would not violate our deeply held religious beliefs," said Teyla, her eyes narrow as she scanned the horizon for crack dealers.

"Well, good," said Sheppard.

They walked on in silence. Then -- because for once _Ford_ had failed to marry the village daughter he'd smiled at -- there were angry natives and shouting and arrows, but none of them were doped so Rodney decided to count that as a success.

"McKay," said Sheppard, bleeding from the head, "if you'd care to dial us home?"

Then it was through the Gate -- which, hey, never got old -- and Carson mocking their injuries. Despite Rodney's severe and traumatising arrow-induced blood loss, Carson insisted on a full run of blood tests to satisfy his own base cravings, which was even less fun with Sheppard pointedly ignoring Rodney for reasons known only to his crazy military mind. Rodney found himself left to detail his perfectly valid medical complaints to a cruel and uncaring world.

Then there was meat surprise in the canteen. Rodney was obediently surprised and went back for seconds.

Zelenka refused to let him into the lab, saying Rodney was dangerous enough when not wounded. Even after Rodney calmly pointed out that not only had the last broken crystal been entirely Zelenka's fault (who put Ancient electronics between Rodney and his first cup of coffee, anyway?) but also Carson had cleared him for duty, Zelenka was implacable.

"Strange," he said. "I am fluent in four languages, and yet when the good doctor says 'Cleared for duty,' I somehow hear 'Don't let that menace back into the labs until he's slept.' Very strange." Nodding to himself, he turned to go back to some data Rodney could easily go through himself. "And no, you are not to come in."

After that, Rodney let himself into Sheppard's quarters. Sheppard, lying on his bed like a centre page model for a highly specialised magazine, looked up blankly from his book.

"McKay?"

Rodney leaned against the wall for a moment, closing his eyes. Then he opened them. "They won't let me into the labs. Zelenka, that underhand bastard, is conspiring with Carson to steal my projects and claim my glory."

"Glory?"

"After they declassify my work, nubile young women will line up to throw themselves at my feet." He nodded firmly, tapping his lip in frustration.

"Sure."

"I'll have to share some of them with Colonel Carter, it's true, but I like to think I'll be gracious in my crushing victory over the entire scientific community."

Sheppard, now blithely refusing to hold up his end of the conversation, turned a page.

Suddenly, Rodney realised what was happening. It all made perfect sense if you just remembered that however much Sheppard acted human -- unconvincingly, true, but no more so than half Rodney's scientists -- he was still military. This required sensitivity. This required tact. He steeled himself.

"You're clearly having some sort of crisis of masculinity. Do you want me to go get Teyla?"

Sheppard blinked at him, agreement obvious in his frown.

"It's okay, I've seen it happen before," Rodney lied. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. It must have been when I --" He made a two-handed gesture that could have been _hit on you while under the influence_, or, if he was honest, _flew to the mainland using only three hairgrips and a whistle_. "Okay?"

Sheppard crinkled his forehead in confusion. "I thought we agreed not to talk about that."

"No, no, not on P4X-984, and thank you," Rodney said with a shudder, "I'd almost repressed that. When I hit on you. I did hit on you, right? M4X-320 is still kind of a blur. But my sheer sexual magnetism must have triggered some sort of flashback to a traumatic college incident, and ever since then you've been fluctuating between terrible pain and equally terrible guilt for taking it out on your innocent co-workers."

The anger, the hostility, the gifts -- why hadn't he seen this before? He schooled his voice to its most soothing. "I'm here for you, Major. If you need to--" He forced the word out, prepared to face up to the consequences of his sexual potency and take one for the team. "--talk."

There was a pause, long enough for Rodney to consider disembowelling himself -- or, better yet, Sheppard -- with Sheppard's guitar.

"Huh," said Sheppard as he put down his book and got up. He walked over to Rodney, giving him a look rather more piercing than Rodney was strictly comfortable with.

"'Huh, thanks to your keen psychological insights I've gotten over my manly and stoic sulking and can now stand to be within three feet of you' or 'Huh, I must go and seduce an Athosian to make up for the time a valued team mate and key member of the expedition blew in my ear'?"

"Just huh, Rodney," said Sheppard, drawing out his name to have eighteen syllables and a diphthong. Everyone needed a hobby; at least this one didn't involve firearms, and hey, Sheppard was getting a little closer than three feet here. "You drugged?"

Rodney scowled at him. "What sort of question is that? Of course I'm not drugged; however little faith I have in Carson's mental prowess, he did run experiments on several litres of my blood."

And then Sheppard backed him against the wall and kissed him, one hand behind Rodney's head and the other gripping his arm too tight.

Rodney pushed him away, but not before their mouths pressed together and Sheppard's tongue flicked along their lips, drawing a whimper. And, okay, not before putting his hand on the small of Sheppard's back to pull him closer, finally getting to enjoy the heat of their bodies moving against each other. And, yes, yes, fine, there was some moaning. But then, because Sheppard was clearly mentally unstable and possibly drugged up to the gills _again_, Rodney pushed him away.

"Wait, wait, what? Are _you_ drugged? You're drugged, aren't you, or -- No, maybe we're still back with the Milons and this is all part of some mass hallucination." He drew a breath, ignoring the amused smile playing at Sheppard's reddened lips. "This goes against Beckett's dictates! The Lord Our Carson is a Vengeful Carson!" he shouted at potential listening Milons.

Sheppard just laughed and kissed him again.

===

"So," said John as they walked down the corridor.

"Yeah," said Rodney.

"Cool."

They entered Elizabeth's office a good two yards apart, smiling.

===  
===

Feedback will be loved and hugged.


End file.
